Star photographer at Nordic Light

Photo Albert Watson

We can now reveal that Albert Watson will visit the Nordic Light Festival of Photography in Kristiansund! He is one of the world’s top photographers and has portrayed everyone from Alfred Hitchcock to Johnny Depp.

The photo industry’s “bible”, Photo District News, ranks Albert Watson as one of the 20 most influential photographers of all time. Albert Watson may not be a familiar name for most people in the Norwegian district of Nordmøre, so it may be difficult to grasp what an achievement it is to get him to Kristiansund.

However, in the same way there were few people in Molde and Romsdal who recognised the names Wayne Shorter, Dexter Gordon, Keith Jarrett and Jack De Johnette when they visited the Molde International Jazz Festival in the late 1960s. Today, the significance of a festival in a small town attracting the big names in a relatively narrow artistic genre cannot be dismissed.Nordic Light attracts the big names within world photography in the same way that Molde International Jazz Festival attracts the stars of the jazz world.

Celebrity photographersMany of Albert Watson’s photographs are iconic portraits of rock stars, rappers, actors and other celebrities. At the end of the 1970s Watson began to combine fashion photography with celebrity portraits. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, David Bowie, Johnny Depp, Kate Moss, Alfred Hitchcock, Jack Nicholson, B.B. King and Naomi Campbell are some of the names he has captured with his camera. Watson has also taken more than 250 cover shots for the fashion magazine Vogue, and his pictures feature regularly in magazines such as Rolling Stone, Time, Vibe, Mademoiselle, GQ and Harper's Bazaar.

Photo Albert WatsonFilm backgroundAfter completing studies of graphic design and film and TV production, Scottish Albert Watson moved to Los Angeles, USA, in 1970. There he started to take photographs, mostly as a hobby. Despite the fact that he has been blind in one eye since birth, Watson is today considered one of the most successful fashion and advertising photographers of our time.

Albert Watson has done hundreds of successful advertising campaigns for major companies, such as Max Factor, Gap, Levi's, Revlon and Chanel. He has also directed more than 600 TV commercials.

In addition, Watson has always used plenty of time on his own projects, creating fantastic pictures from his many journeys around the world. He takes photos of landscapes and interiors, as well as portraits. The archives in his large studio in Manhattan’s West Village, which he also uses as a personal gallery, are filled with millions of pictures and negatives. Albert Watson’s work is exhibited at museums and galleries across the world.